Marcos myths help bring dictator’s son back to power in Philippines

A video posted in 2020 on YouTube claims the French astrologer Nostradamus predicted the end result of this week’s presidential election within the Philippines.

“Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr is destined by destiny and ready by time to proceed the good plan of his father for the Maharlika nation,” the Tagalog-language movie claims, referring to the Philippine’s pre-colonial warrior class. “He’s probably the most certified to turn into the president of the nation.”

Whereas no document exists for such a prophecy, this week Marcos gained a landslide victory in an election more likely to entrench the ability of two households seen by many as bywords for authoritarian rule.

Marcos is now set to observe within the footsteps of his late father, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And when he’s sworn in for a six-year time period in July, he’ll achieve this alongside vice-presidential operating mate Sara Duterte, daughter of the departing populist head of state Rodrigo Duterte, whose time period has been marked by reversals in democratic accountability and human rights.

Analysts stated Marcos’s comeback to the Malacañang Palace, which his household fled by helicopter in 1986 within the face of a “Individuals Energy” revolt, was helped by a fastidiously curated marketing campaign of on-line disinformation and revisionism geared toward whitewashing his father’s dictatorship.

Nevertheless, they stated different elements performed vital roles in his victory, together with the household’s highly effective regional political networks and the choice of Duterte’s daughter to run with him.

“The Marcos-Duterte ticket operating collectively was very sturdy,” stated Sheila Coronel, a professor at Columbia Journalism Faculty. “Individually they might have competed for votes and never so simply gained public workplace.” 

Whereas the Marcoses’ political base is in Ilocos, northern Luzon, the Dutertes are from Davao on southern Mindanao island, the place daughter and father each rose from native politics to the nationwide stage.

Leni Robredo, the presidential candidate representing the liberal political camp that dominated the speedy post-Marcos years, gained fewer than half the votes of Marcos Jr.

“We now have a whole technology becoming a member of the voting inhabitants who solely noticed the austerity of resuscitating our economic system after the Marcos years, and never the disaster years triggered by the dictatorship,” stated Ronald Mendoza, dean of Manila’s Ateneo Faculty of Authorities.

The Marcos household’s comeback has been a long time within the making. Once they returned from exile in Hawaii in 1991 after the loss of life of the late dictator, they had been shunned by a lot of the Manila institution.

Imelda Marcos failed in a presidential bid the next 12 months, however gained a congressional seat in 1995. The youthful Marcos and his sister Imee first entered native politics in Ilocos, then gained seats within the nationwide Congress.

In the meantime, a parallel effort started placing a spin on the late Marcos’s rule, which had been marked by repression and financial disaster. The marketing campaign was aided by what researchers stated was co-ordinated on-line promotion of false historic narratives.

“They’ve been taking part in this lengthy recreation, and a part of it was filling in data voids in regards to the martial legislation interval, which historical past books don’t consider a lot,” stated Jonathan Corpus Ong, affiliate professor of worldwide digital media on the College of Massachusetts. “Marcos folklore was seeded on social media and so they waited for it to get traction.” 

Ong stated an early instance got here in 2015, when what he referred to as “architects of community disinformation” used hashtags and posts to garner assist for Marcos’s reburial with state honours. After Duterte took energy, he ordered the state dictator reinterred in Manila’s Heroes’ Cemetery.

Marcos Jr narrowly misplaced to Robredo for the vice-presidency within the 2016 nationwide election. However the groundwork was being laid for this 12 months’s run in a rustic the place 82 per cent of individuals use social media and most get their information from it, in accordance with analysis consultancy Datareportal.

After being criticised for his or her function as instruments serving to Duterte win the final election and suppress opponents, Fb, Twitter, and Google in addition to newcomer TikTok all stated they took steps this 12 months to assist election integrity and management the dissemination of false data.

Nevertheless, movies within the fashion of newscasts, repainting the Marcos dictatorship as a golden age, stay prevalent on-line. Some declare the Marcos household, who prosecutors say profited from billions of {dollars}’ price of ill-gotten beneficial properties, actually earned their wealth from gold, or that the Philippines was certainly one of Asia’s “strongest and most admired international locations” in the course of the dictatorship.

“There’s lots of false nostalgia in regards to the martial legislation years — that they had been golden years for the economic system and for Philippine society,” stated Mendoza. “They weren’t: analysis supplies information and proof to set the document straight that these years had been horrible for human rights and depressing for the economic system.”

Filipinos at the moment are asking what sort of president Marcos Jr will likely be. His plans, together with any for the administration of what earlier than Covid-19 was certainly one of south-east Asia’s fastest-growing economies, are largely a thriller, as he didn’t be part of Robredo or different candidates in debates.

Duterte has lashed out at main oligarchs, tangled with the US over human rights and a navy pact and led a largely unsuccessful pivot towards China, however analysts count on his successor to pursue smoother relations with each enterprise and diplomatic companions.

A lot of the Philippine enterprise elite backed Robredo, however Marcos is — like Duterte — more likely to put technocrats in prime financial posts.

Duterte didn’t go to the US throughout his presidency, however his daughter did in 2020 on a management programme sponsored by the state division, a potential harbinger of smoother relations with the Philippines’ treaty ally.

“Duterte’s departure will take away baggage within the US-Philippine relationship,” stated Peter Mumford, south-east Asia analyst with Eurasia Group. “Whereas it’s not the perfect final result Washington would have wished, each it and Beijing will likely be broadly pleased.”

Further reporting by Guill Ramos in Manila